The 1598 First Quarto of the play is the earliest dramatic text to have ‘by W. Shakespeare’ on its title-page. Love’s Labour’s Lost is described as ‘a pleasant conceited comedy’ and we are informed that it was ‘presented before her Highness this last Christmas’. The title-page further claims that the text is ‘newly corrected and augmented’, implying that it was written and performed somewhat earlier than 1598, and perhaps that a previous edition, now lost, had been published. It is listed by Francis Meres (along with the mysterious Love’s Labour’s Won) as one of Shakespeare’s comedies in his Palladis Tamia (also 1598), but it is usually dated 1594-5, mainly on internal evidence. It was revived in 1604 for performance at Court before Queen Anne. Some inconsistencies in the narrative, confusion over characters’ names and repetition of dialogue in this text seem to indicate that it was printed from Shakespeare’s working manuscript.
The phrase ‘conceited comedy’ is in this case an appropriate designation of a play whose verbal wit and ingenuity must have dazzled its original audiences and can occasionally baffle modern ones. Not only the supposedly sophisticated courtiers but also the lower-class characters play endlessly with language, achieving effects which can be brilliant, pedantic or bathetic, but are very frequently connected with obscenity. This has been one cause of the play’s relative unpopularity, though recent productions have shown that it can work well on stage as a lively and quite acerbic courtship comedy. Some of the wordplay does seem to be topical – the play is self-conscious about what Moth refers to as ‘a great feast of languages’ (5.1.35–6) – but broader attempts to find historical models for the characters and situations are now widely discounted.
The play’s title reflects its unconventional ending: in the short term at least the male lovers (with the surprising exception of Armado) have lost their labour in so far as they have not won the women. The closing songs are enigmatic, particularly in raising the threat of infidelity even before marriage is assured. A modern emphasis on the darker aspects of the play has taken more seriously such things as the breaking of vows, the cruelty of the courtiers to the amateur actors and the intrusion of death at the end. At the same time Berowne and Rosaline as sparring partners have appealed to actors and audiences as prototypes of Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, and talented performers have proved that the comedy of Don Armado and Holofernes is still not past its sell-by date.
The 1998 Arden text is based on the 1598 First Quarto, with reference in some places to the 1623 First Folio.
LIST OF ROLES
KING Ferdinand of Navarre
BOYET
a lord attending the Princess
Monsieur MARCADÉ
a messenger
Don Adriano de ARMADO
a Spanish knight and braggart
MOTH
his page, a boy
HOLOFERNES
a schoolmaster
NATHANIEL
a curate
Anthony DULL
a constable
COSTARD
a clown
JAQUENETTA
a dairymaid
FORESTER
LORDS
attending the Princess
Blackamoors and others attending the King
1.1 Enter Ferdinand, KING of Navarre, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE and DUMAINE.
KING Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live registered upon our brazen tombs,
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring time,
Th’endeavour of this present breath may buy
5
That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge,
And make us heirs of all eternity.
Therefore, brave conquerors – for so you are,
That war against your own affections
And the huge army of the world’s desires –
10
Our late edict shall strongly stand in force.
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world,
Our court shall be a little academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.
You three, Berowne, Dumaine and Longaville,
15
Have sworn for three years’ term to live with me,
My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes
That are recorded in this schedule here.
Your oaths are passed, and now subscribe your names,
That his own hand may strike his honour down
20
That violates the smallest branch herein.
If you are armed to do as sworn to do,
Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.
LONGAVILLE I am resolved: ’tis but a three years’ fast.
The mind shall banquet though the body pine.
25
Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.
[Signs.]
DUMAINE My loving lord, Dumaine is mortified.
The grosser manner of these world’s delights
He throws upon the gross world’s baser slaves.
30
To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die,
With all these living in philosophy. [Signs.]
BEROWNE I can but say their protestation over.
So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,
That is, to live and study here three years.
35
But there are other strict observances:
As not to see a woman in that term,
Which I hope well is not enrolled there;
And one day in a week to touch no food,
And but one meal on every day beside,
40
The which I hope is not enrolled there;
And then to sleep but three hours in the night,
And not be seen to wink of all the day,
When I was wont to think no harm all night
And make a dark night too of half the day,
45
Which I hope well is not enrolled there.
O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep:
Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep.
KING Your oath is passed to pass away from these.
BEROWNE Let me say no, my liege, an if you please.
50
I only swore to study with your grace
And stay here in your court for three years’ space.
LONGAVILLE
You swore to that, Berowne, and to the rest.
BEROWNE By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest.
What is the end of study, let me know?
55
KING
Why, that to know which else we should not know.
BEROWNE
Things hid and barred, you mean, from common sense?
KING Ay, that is study’s god-like recompense.
BEROWNE Come on then, I will swear to study so,
To know the thing I am forbid to know:
60
As thus, to study where I well may dine,
When I to feast expressly am forbid;
Or study where to meet some mistress fine,
When mistresses from common sense are hid.
Or, having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath,
65
Study to break it, and not break my troth.
If study’s gain be thus, and this be so,
Study knows that which yet it doth not know.
Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no.
KING These be the stops that hinder study quite
70
And train our intellects to vain delight.
BEROWNE Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain
Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain:
As painfully to pore upon a book
To seek the light of truth, while truth the while
75
Doth falsely blind the eye
sight of his look.
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile;
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
Study me how to please the eye indeed
80
By fixing it upon a fairer eye,
Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,
And give him light that it was blinded by.
Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun,
That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks;
85
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others’ books.
These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights,
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights
90
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
Too much to know is to know naught but fame,
And every godfather can give a name.
KING How well he’s read, to reason against reading.
DUMAINE Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding.
95
LONGAVILLE
He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding.
BEROWNE
The spring is near when green geese are a-breeding.
DUMAINE How follows that?
BEROWNE Fit in his place and time.
DUMAINE In reason nothing.
BEROWNE Something then in rhyme.
KING Berowne is like an envious sneaping frost,
100
That bites the first-born infants of the spring.
BEROWNE
Well, say I am. Why should proud summer boast
Before the birds have any cause to sing?
Why should I joy in any abortive birth?
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
105
Than wish a snow in May’s newfangled shows,
But like of each thing that in season grows.
So you, to study now it is too late,
Climb o’er the house to unlock the little gate.
KING Well, sit you out. Go home, Berowne: adieu.
110
BEROWNE
No, my good lord, I have sworn to stay with you,
And though I have for barbarism spoke more
Than for that angel knowledge you can say,
Yet confident I’ll keep what I have sworn
And bide the penance of each three years’ day.
115
Give me the paper, let me read the same,
And to the strictest decrees I’ll write my name.
KING How well this yielding rescues thee from shame.
BEROWNE [Reads.] Item, That no woman shall come
within a mile of my court– Hath this been proclaimed?
120
LONGAVILLE Four days ago.
BEROWNE Let’s see the penalty – On pain of losing her
tongue. Who devised this penalty?
LONGAVILLE Marry, that did I.
BEROWNE Sweet lord, and why?
125
LONGAVILLE
To fright them hence with that dread penalty.
BEROWNE A dangerous law against gentility.
Item, If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the
term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as
the rest of the court can possible devise.
130
This article, my liege, yourself must break,
For well you know here comes in embassy
The French King’s daughter with yourself to speak –
A maid of grace and complete majesty –
About surrender up of Aquitaine
135
To her decrepit, sick and bedrid father.
Therefore this article is made in vain,
Or vainly comes th’admired Princess hither.
KING What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.
BEROWNE So study evermore is overshot.
140
While it doth study to have what it would,
It doth forget to do the thing it should;
And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,
’Tis won as towns with fire: so won, so lost.
KING We must of force dispense with this decree.
145
She must lie here on mere necessity.
BEROWNE Necessity will make us all forsworn
Three thousand times within this three years’ space;
For every man with his affects is born,
Not by might mastered, but by special grace.
150
If I break faith, this word shall speak for me:
I am forsworn ‘on mere necessity’.
So to the laws at large I write my name,
And he that breaks them in the least degree
Stands in attainder of eternal shame.
155
Suggestions are to other as to me;
But I believe, although I seem so loath,
I am the last that will last keep his oath. [Signs.]
But is there no quick recreation granted?
KING
Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted
160
With a refined traveller of Spain,
A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 324